In Rabastens, two book dealers re-offend, United Souls lends its support

Once upon a time, there was a Black man and an Arab man.

Don't worry, they're French. I prefer to clarify, because in the land of dimmed lights, you sometimes have to show your ID three times before being allowed to love Molière, Césaire, or Duras.

Anyway!

These two had a dangerous idea. A truly delinquent cultural idea: to open a committed bookstore in a small Tarn village, in Rabastens, in the Tarn department.

Yes, a bookstore. Not a kebab shop. Not a shisha bar. A bookstore.

So they started dealing books. Paper thoughts. Bound subversion. Novels, essays, poetry. Enough to make dormant brains sweat and cause a few strokes among the self-proclaimed guardians of good republican taste.

And against all odds, the bookstore is a hit.

People come, buy, discuss, read. Some even discover that a book can be used for something other than propping up a coffee table or decorating an Ikea shelf.

But one evening, as the bookstore was about to close, young people from the village burst in. They ransacked the shop and beat up the Arab man, who was alone there.

The village is shocked. Moved. Outraged. The incident is reported by La Dépêche. We then discover, with that always somewhat tiring astonishment, that stupidity can be white, wear sneakers, speak French, and live right next door.

But the Black man and the Arab man don't give up.

Because when you've chosen to contribute to the deflowering of brains through literature, you don't lower the curtain at the first poorly digested outburst of hatred.

So they continue.

They organize literary meetings, screenings and debates, discussions at the village cinema. They transform a bookstore into a place of gentle resistance, a factory of connections, an outpost against ignorance.

And a few years after this drama, they are launching the first edition of the International Independent Book Festival: the F.I.L.I.

A festival to build bridges between readers, publishers, booksellers, and authors. A space to circulate words, imaginations, and ideas, at the very moment when the great owners of public discourse, national publishing, and the media are quietly implementing their little cultural policy of fear.

A reactionary media policy, sometimes frankly fascist, carefully packaged as opinion debate, but always serving the same colossal interests.

Because privileges must be preserved in a world where wealth disparities are becoming abyssal.

So, in Rabastens, while some billionaires buy news channels to sell continuous panic, two booksellers continue to deal books.

And frankly, between those who sell hate in prime time and those who sell books in a Tarn village, we know very well who scares the system more.

So come and support the dangerous traffickers of free thought.

The first edition of the International Independent Book Festival is on June 20 and 21 in Rabastens.

From Toulouse, the village is accessible by train for €1. Yes, €1. Even the capitalist system sometimes has useful flaws.

Come read, debate, meet publishers, booksellers, authors, and share a lively, popular, and necessary moment.

Because an open book will always do more damage in one's head than a continuous news channel.

United Souls and ART Weapon in Rabastens

It is in this spirit that United Souls and ART Weapon have been invited to participate in this first edition of the International Independent Book Festival.

For us, this invitation resonates deeply. Because United Souls is not just a brand of t-shirts and tote bags featuring figures of struggle. It is an artistic and humanistic approach. A way of circulating faces, memories, struggles, and legacies in the public space.

In Rabastens, our XXL exhibition is installed in the streets of the city. Portraits of figures of struggle leave closed walls to dialogue with passers-by, facades, squares, glances.

They are not there to gently decorate the landscape. They are there to remind us that struggles do not live only in history books, but also in our streets, our bodies, our clothes, our discussions, and our daily commitments.

Installing these faces in public space is to pay tribute to those who thought, resisted, wrote, sang, fought. It is also to make the city an open book. A book that one crosses, questions, shares.

And within the framework of an independent book festival, this encounter between words, images, and the street takes on its full meaning.